Hi. Today I've noted, for the first time, this signature added by Bitrix at the bottom of outgoing emails:

"Sent by bitrix24.com - world's most popular free CRM and client management solution"

Why we were not warned about this?It's not so fine to add advertising info like this, without any previous info to the users, moreover specifing "free CRM"... Is it possible to modify/hide it?We use free version of Bitrix, and our test should last at least one year: complex business is commitetd, and we wait for more customers before purchase a paid Bitrix solution, but it's business anyway....

I totally agree with Richard. If/when the word "free" will disappear from the forced signature I'll restart to use Bitrix email again (even if thare are some others open issues with it). Until now I keep on using my own email provider.

Yana, Has your team given us new guys trying out Bitrix a tool to remove this add. It is a bit disheartening to see a forced add in this location. I would happily put a link on our website or something for you if you can remove this.

I do not think anyone can accept this advertising on corporate emails. I was planning to start using the free plan, but this email advertising at the bottom forces me to look at other CRM solutions. I think it would be best not to allow free users to integrate email, than forcing the advertising, specially when yo do not know about it until someone alerts you about it. Using the word free and a link it is also problematic as many email server will send that automatically to the spam folder.

Obviously, I agree with Rafael. I did have problems with customers/contacts firewalls just for the inserted advertising. I have switched to my own e-mail system (where I could use CC and BCC too....) instead than Bitrix months ago, but anyway I keep on following the evolution of Bitrix email system...

Thanks for your observations, there is a set of reasons why emails sent form Bitrix24 can be found in consumer's spam folders - the email signature is only one of them, but we'll have a closer look at your suggestion.

Hello Yana, Beginning Migration for our company to using Bitrix. Was disheartened to see this advertisement of Bitrix in the outgoing emails. Have you given any thought to removing this line since March? Would be willing to pay a nominal fee possibly to remove it for people not needing the full feature set described by the"Standard" SubscriptionThanks in advance,Jason

I've seen several requests to change the word Free to something else. The advertising isn't as much the issue as the word free which gives a bad impression to our clients. You said that you/Bitrix would consider this suggestion but I don't see there has been any change and the word free still appears attached to outgoing messages. Is there consideration to change this or will it always remain in the outbound emails?

I know internally you think that people will pay to remove the word free and keeping it in there is incentive to move someone from free to paid, but I believe you'll lose more clients than gain using this tactic.

This FREE promotion "feature" in your CRM outgoing emails has a few MAJOR problems for the future of your business model, namely;

It seems subversive since you do not warn your prospective clients that this will happen, not in any documentation or video tutorials, and since CRM is our interaction with our most precious business asset you most certainly ensure that you will lose a prospective client who is embarrassed with this situation with his client or loses due to spam filtering due to the message. Honestly, this is such a 1990's web marketing tactic that it presents you and us, your prospective clients, as archaic in technology adoption. ***** So rather produce a pop-up to warn use that this will happen *****

We have been searching for a decent CRM solution for many months but unfortunately most services have brilliant features but only basic email integration which adds the burden to re-record emails conversations in the system. For example, a competitor of yours has a beautiful UI as welll as reporting and great deal-flow capabilities with region assignment but lacks one basic feature for which I was testing your solution - they do not allow embedded HTML from their email integration. ***** So now we cannot even determine if your service meets this criteria for consideration in our shortlist - unless we signup ????

Thankfully we tested this scenario with an internal account, however this does raise a MAJOR issue that there could be other "rotten easter-egg" features like this in your CRM which we could not possibly risk exposing to our clients since as a software consulting company who markets ourselves as a innovative business transformation specialists our clients would absolutely cringe at the thought of responding to ANY email or phone call thereafter.

Message to your management: Your product has extensive features and has obviously been adopted widely over the years - BUT we are well down the road to TWENTY TWENTY ! So maybe, as not to upset your existing freebie clients, just add a priced option for even $5 not to include the ads although I don't know how you going to avoid the embarrassment of saying such on your home page ...

If bitrix's norm is to include ads on free accounts at least do it in a way that empowers both the CRM and clients by replacing the phrase by something meaningful like "Sent by bitrix24.com - CRM trusted by almost 1 million organizations worldwide"

Ya....I was just looking into using the email part of Bitrix24.... Don't think that's going to happen.

+1 to everyone who made the simple suggestion of changing free to Great or something else.+1 also for the idea of paying a nominal fee to remove it all together for those of us who don't need the BMW features of the paid plan.

Interesting comments and feedback. I agree for the most part with the general feelings on this matter - I wasn't thrilled when I sent a test email to myself to find the automated footer (and with no means of editing it). But I also think that there's a little bit of over reaction to the "free" component.

(As a side note, whenever you're testing a new system, I would suggest setting up a test user with a test email of your own and try each of the features on yourself as a guinea pig - that way you're not suddenly shocked or surprised by something your clients have or haven't received.)

I do agree that it will target the emails to end up under spam folders (which is incredibly inconvenient) and I do agree that a modified wording for it would be more desirable. As Giuliano suggested, "Sent by bitrix24.com - CRM trusted by almost 1 million organizations worldwide" is very professional. A slight better stylization of this line would be better too - it comes through as a larger, kind of yucky text and looks like a kid added it lol. It would be nice if it at least looked a little better - a slightly smaller font, italics, type of thing.

On the flip side, there are always work arounds for companies that think outside of the box... why not add your own signature to the bottom of your emails? Then below your regular info and above the Bitrix info say something like: "We are an innovative company who are always on the lookout for new tools for businesses. As indicated below, we are currently working with a complimentary introductory option to give us the ability to offer our own opinions and recommendations to other businesses. We'd love your feedback regarding your experience with this particular system."

If necessary, down the road you could even modify it to say something like: "We have been so impressed with the no cost version of this system that we have opted to stay with it. We believe in a budget well spent and have found that we don't need the additional features within the paid versions. We're pleased to announce that this choice means that we won't have to implement a price increase on our products or services this year!" (type of thing)

Perhaps not 100% ideal for every business, but something along those lines will be openly accepted by most clients in most industries. Free tools and open source options aren't anything new and it's probably not a bad idea for businesses to test out free options of a product before jumping in both feet and spending a ton of money (though to be honest, the prices of Bitrix24 are very affordable compared to most systems I've been researching). It's also fair to assume that MOST businesses looking to use the free version are smaller businesses with smaller teams - there's nothing embarrassing about being economical and selective on where the budget is spent. If a multi-million dollar corporation is trying to use this as a free tool and complaining about the footer, well, shame on you lol.

Perhaps the management of Bitrix24 and the Free version users could look to meet in the middle? A minor change in the mandatory wording and tweak to the stylization of it by management... combined with an added custom footer by the user that takes the edge off it... Perhaps Bitrix24 could even provide a dedicated field where this add-on to the footer could be included?

@Tanya great suggestions on customizing the email signature, however as per my understanding and I am open to correction here, one can only customize the "mail-out" feature fr om CRM if you are not using the FREE plan. Nevertheless, your "outta the box thinking' has given me an idea for a new software service ...

Essentially, the major issue is that for CRM to saves any reasonable amount of time, it has to plugin and track email correspondence without impacting whether that mail is seen by the client and not delayed. Alot of SME's in the consulting business do business with large corporations who for good reason have strict processes for secure email and this is wh ere Bitrix's adware is a major issue, since the client might not receive a crucial email. Bitrix further complicates the issue by not informing users that adware will be ins erted in communications.

The facts is that Bitrix is obviously rich in functionality and most importantly is easy to adopt. However, for some reason Bitrix management has chosen to ignore the fact that the scale of adoption of SAAS products over recent years has created a set of defacto standards for free or paid solutions while security standards are assumed throughout the business workplace.

Bitrix should take our complaints or suggestions in good faith as our support for the potential of the product since we devote significant time to highlight issues.In the spirit of supporting your product please consider the following;- avoid adware since such email is denigrated to spam folders- be transparent, the SAAS marketplace has matured so vendors have to be transparent with their users about feature limitations or hidden motives for profit- maintain compliance to de-facto standards since inter-connectivity requires that security standards are applicable to all organizations whether SME or corporates

In the meantime, may I suggest a solution which expands on other comments in this thread.Bitrix could append ONLY an image to CRM emails. That being a well designed promotion logo including the Bitrix24 logo and text underneath, "The best val ue CRM".*** Note ONLY an image - no text, no hyperlink etc. ***

Agree with Trevor but other problems with CRM email integration are realling starting to steer me away from using Bitrix

1. Bounced emails sent from the Bitrix CRM do not report back to the sending email address that the email was sent to an invalid email address. this means a mistype on the email address can lead to assuming the client has received the email and he has not

2. Emails going to spam folders due to incorrect email formating or adware.

3. Absolutley horrid email editor that makes formating an email very tedius and when you eventually get it looking OK and send it - it looks completely different at the receivers end.

4. Sent emails from Bitrix24 received at the senders outlook inbox as well as the recipients inbox - not sure why?

On the plus side the email templates are available on the 'free' version and are very useful.

I work with outlook for email and most UK companies are on an outlook exchange server - all we want is to link this to the Bitrix CRM but this seems to be a bit clunky

I agree with so much of this. We're planning on upgrading, but not yet. In the meantime, 1- Not only is the word "Free" very much an issue, but changing that should have been done a long time ago (based on the age of this thread). A nominal charge is an option that is better than now.2- Email as a whole feels like one of the weaker points of Bitrix. I just don't have a lot of confidence in it, and that's bad. The editor is just OK, but no CC or BCC? Really?And Email issues raised by @Richard Duff are especially troubling. Bitrix really should study the STRENTHS of some other CRM's in this department.

I have given up with the email sending from within Btrix24 as too many problems and issues.

I do use the send and save feature and send a copy of all outgoing emails to Bitrix24 via the BCC field in Outlook - this works and is reliable - Outlook is the default business emailservice in the UK and everyone uses it or at least can read emails sent from Outlook. Bounces report properly as well. Sometimes I guess at a prospects email address and when itbounces I know to try a different format.

I forward the recieved email from client to Bitrix24 but have to add the [CID#13] in the subject line to get it to attach to the correct leads or contact.

For the moment this gives me the safest and most reliable compromise

Just wish there was a proper integration with Outlook like with Zoho CRM

Also meeting invites are standard from within Outlook and I have yet to find a way to link this to Bitrix24 CRM. This feature of Outlook is very much used to confirm meetings.

Hello, I have been using this CRM for about a week. Was taking time this Saturday to make some templates and found the FREE on the signature. For all of you who did not send a TEST email I feel for you. Talk about your credibility being challenged by Bitrix. Although we are going to continue testing Bitrix for a couple of more weeks. We will not be using the template or CRM email component. It seems these features are probably not ready for prime time. At least from what I am reading hear. I don't know about anybody else. But email is too important of a tool, to have to worry about it being delivered a the proper/timely manner.

Hi Yana, although I understand the Bitrix reasons, I quote and agree that the "FREE" word in the free-plan signature gives a very bad impression to my customers and contacts about my companies and about Bitrix.

As per my 2 companies I manage with Bitrix, the president of one of these companies started fighting against me when I sent him an email via Bitrix and he saw such signature .. so now I barely can use Bitrix for noting down all the things and sales analysis but not for writing emails and communication.

For the paied-plan upgrade my president is not so willing as he was unpleased about the signature episode and he always replies that for paying Bitrix he'd "rather pay for Salesforce!!"

So here's my strong recommendation to replace the word "free" with another suitable one.

I just noticed the advertising in the emails and find it disturbing. If the word free would be removed it would do not such harm. Unfortunately I will need to forego the email integration, which is a very nice feature, but not until Bitrix strategists use common sense. Plus plan would imply moving from $0 to $39/month, which is quite an expensive proposition for just removing the ad or making it look less 'cheap' and more professional by removing the word free.